{"id":3594,"date":"2023-04-07T18:10:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/pakistan-to-launch-new\/"},"modified":"2023-04-07T18:18:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:18:32","slug":"pakistan-to-launch-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/pakistan-to-launch-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan to launch new military operation against Islamist militants -statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam<\/p>\n

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan plans to launch a new nationwide operation to root out Islamist militants, the national security committee said on Friday, in a potentially costly move for a country already facing full-blown economic and political crises.<\/p>\n

One analyst said the operation would also serve as a pretext for the government to delay provincial elections it had been under pressure to hold next month.<\/p>\n

Pakistan is in danger of defaulting on its debt, with an International Monetary Fund bailout programme stalled since November, while a bruising political battle is raging between the government and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.<\/p>\n

The last time it launched an all-out operation against Islamist militants was in 2014, and it cost the country billions of dollars and resulted over a million people being displaced and hundreds being killed.<\/p>\n

“The meeting agreed to launch an all-out comprehensive operation with the entire nation and the government, which will rid the country of the menace of terrorism with renewed vigor and determination,” the security committee said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country of 220 million people, has seen a rise in attacks by Islamist militants in the last few months, particularly since negotiations with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militant group broke down last year. <\/p>\n

This year, the group and its factions have unleashed a wave of attacks including a suicide bombing at a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed over 100 people, mostly policemen.<\/p>\n

The security committee said it held a meeting on Friday chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and attended by the country’s military leadership, and formed a committee to make recommendations regarding the details of the anti-militant operations within two weeks.<\/p>\n

The meeting was summoned by Sharif a day after he and his allies held a parliamentary vote to reject a Supreme Court order to hold provincial polls next month.<\/p>\n

The government has maintained that the worsening security situation means the provincial elections would have to be delayed.<\/p>\n

PREMISE FOR DELAY<\/p>\n

“Operations have already been under way…but this statement will be a premise for the government to say it can’t hold elections in the middle of a country-wide operation,” Zahid Hussain, an author of books on militancy in Pakistan, told Reuters.<\/p>\n

The court has already rejected the government’s argument, but Friday’s security committee statement brings with it the key endorsement of Pakistan’s powerful military. <\/p>\n

“This is a very smartly crafted statement. It (the government) gets the military’s backing without the military giving any sort of political statement,” Hussain added.<\/p>\n

Pakistan’s military has ruled the country for over 30 years out of its 75-year history and continues to wield enormous power.<\/p>\n

Government and military spokespersons did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Former Prime Minister Khan has been pushing for elections amid rising anger at the government over decades-high inflation and a crippling economic slowdown as it tries to navigate tough IMF-backed economic reforms.<\/p>\n

Khan said on Thursday that the committee meeting was summoned to use security as a pretext to delay elections, warning that it would pit the military against the judiciary.<\/p>\n

The political crisis has already severely affected economic decision-making. Pakistan’s finance minister cited domestic political turmoil as a reason to cancel his visit to Washington to attend spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Gibran Peshimam in Karachi; Editing by Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n

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By Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan plans to launch a new nationwide operation to root out Islamist militants, the national security committee said on Friday, in a potentially costly move for a country already facing full-blown economic and political crises. One analyst said the operation would also serve as a pretext […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-3594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ360BA-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3629,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions\/3629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}